BREAKING: I followed the trail of Mark Carney’s money-laundering scheme
I’m writing to you from a tax haven called the Isle of Man. I’ve never seen any place quite like it. It’s a little island between Ireland and the UK, home to 85,000 people. And it’s famous for two things: its annual motorcycle race, and billionaires avoiding their taxes.
That’s why I’m here: because two and a half years ago Mark Carney set up a shell company to avoid paying taxes in Canada. The Isle of Man has very few taxes — no capitals gains tax, no inheritance tax, no wealth tax. Income tax is just 22%. Corporate taxes are 10% or less.
But the Isle of Man does something more important: it allows oligarchs from around the world to pay taxes on their global income to the Isle of Man. So they can operate around the world, but choose to pay a fraction of their real tax obligation in the Isle of Man.
And perhaps the most important feature of the Isle of Man’s tax scheme is the secrecy. Anyone can set up shell companies hiding the true ownership of any business. That’s why this place is full of Russian oligarchs, international drug dealers and semi-legal online casinos. They can hide their tracks.
Which brings us to Mark Carney, the chairman of Brookfield Asset Management until just a few weeks ago. He set up a complex corporate structure to avoid paying Canadian taxes. To him, taxes are for the little people. In the video, I show how I searched the corporate registry to find Brookfield IOM’s address, and to find the identity of their sole director: an 88-year-old man named Leslie Commins.
The registry gave the address of Brookfield IOM’s headquarters, but it wasn’t in an office tower, or an office at all — it was just Leslie’s small apartment. Of course, 88-year-old Leslie Commins isn’t the real owner of Brookfield IOM. He’s what they call a “straw man”. Of course his apartment isn’t the world headquarters of Brookfield IOM. Of course the whole thing is a sham, to pretend that Brookfield IOM does business in the Isle of Man, so it can pay its global taxes there.
Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if you could do that? If you ran a barber shop, or farm, or restaurant, and instead of paying all the taxes and regulations Canada piles onto you, you could just have a guy in the Isle of Man saying that’s your world headquarters, so you’ll pay all your taxes there?
It’s obviously tax avoidance, which is why so many shady characters put their money in the Isle of Man. Like Mark Carney.
I thought it was eye-opening to see how casually the man who was “selected” to become our prime minister, engages in unethical tax-dodging for his well-connected friends. And remember, Carney has never answered where he personally paid taxes last year, or the year before, or the year before that. Did he pay them in the Isle of Man, or some other tax haven?
Obviously that’s a question that the CBC would never ask. (I put eight questions to the Liberal Party in writing today, but obviously they wouldn’t answer these questions, no matter who asks them.) We’ll keep at it.
REPORT by @EzraLevant:
@CBCNews Can you bring back CBC from 40years ago? Maybe if you had unbiased Journalism more of Canada would support you. I can handle a viewpoint that doesn't agree with me. Why can't you?